Jazz McCool: Teen Detective
Thwonk!
Having succumbed to Jaz’s cunning style of play in our previous two matches, I was determined that this Wednesday’s after-school tête-à-tête was going to be different!
Thwonk!
Tennis, Jaz had figured, would be just the ticket for restoring muscle tone after a particularly long winter, although I suspected getting a head start on her summer tan had also factored into the matter.
Thwonk!
“Right back at ya, Jaz!” I grunted.
Thwonk!
“Take that, knave!” she grunted back.
Thwonk!
‘Look left, then nail the far-right corner,’ I planned my next shot.
Thwonk!
Thwonk!
‘Jeez, how did she hit that?!’ I despaired.
Thwonk!
And then! There they were! — catching my eye in the distance, over Jaz’s shoulder: four elephants, in a row, ambling down Cotterstone Street as if it were nobody’s business!
And, the next thing I knew — Thwuank!! — I take Jaz’s vicious return volley directly in the solar plexus and everything goes kind of blurry.
With sentience returning, I found Jaz’s not altogether unappealing face to be hovering over me.
“Sorry about that, Chuck. You okay?”
“Not sure Jaz, maybe delusional,” I replied, weakly lifting my finger in the direction of the elephants.
“Not delusional, you should just read more, that’s all.
“But I’m an avid … “
“Posters, Chuck … all over town. It’s the circus. Cotterstone Street is simply the most direct route from the train yard to the fairgrounds. I assume you’re taking me. I like to sit close.”
As I sat alone shelling peanuts in row three, ahead of the big show (Jaz having gone gadabout, wanting to ’get the feel of circus life’) I thought back to last summer and to what Jaz now refers to as ′The Cake Decorating Mayor Affair’ (although, to me, ‘fiasco’ would seem more apt), and of how, as a result, she had caught the ‘detecting bug’ (as she called it) — leading her to hang out, metaphorically speaking, a new shingle: “Jaz McCool ~ Teen Detective.”
Since then, Jaz had successfully located two missing cats and one ferret; revealed the identity of the ‘bubble gum bandit’ (a five-year-old girl named ‘Molly’); determined the whereabouts of old lady Crookshank’s recipe book (Mrs. Bunch had “borrowed” it), and uncovered the names of a cheating boyfriend’s four sweethearts on the side.
But with high school graduation just a month away, Jaz would soon be retiring her gumshoes — as for the two of us it would be: adios Casablanca ... and hello State U!
“Hi Chuck … any peanuts left there for your circus date?” asked Jaz, taking a seat beside me.
“Got a whole separate bag for you here in my coat pocket,” said I, ‘returning service,’ so to speak.
“Good move. You know, wandering about, I’m beginning to think there’s something fishy smelling about this operation.”
“Camel-ey smells … elephant-ey smells … I would believe. But fishy smells ... at a circus? Not likely, Jaz.”
“Peanuts, please.”
“Oh, sorry, here.”
“Just pay close attention to the high wire act. When I was passing by their trailer, something seemed very, well, let’s just say, interesting.”
Right then the lights went low, and canned, tinny circus music began blaring from cheap speakers. Next, illuminated by a spotlight, the ringmaster appeared and moved to stand in the middle of the big top’s single ring — where he cried out: “Ladies and gentlemen … boys and girls! Welcome to Circus Wunderbar! Please prepare yourselves for the experience of a lifetime!”
“His mustache is obviously fake,” murmured Jaz, elbowing me.
“Hey, that hurt! Can we just watch the show, please?”
“Oh, I’ll be watching, Chuck! You can bet your good old American bottom dollar on that! I will be watching.”
First up was a combination plate-spinner and dog-act, whose finale consisted of an impressive thirty-seven plates (by my count) spinning simultaneously on poles, while pink and blue poodles made a series of coordinated back flips. Next came some clowns, which was okay, except for the fact that clowns have always kind of creeped me out.
Finally, following an enjoyable, albeit hokey, shooting of a chimp from a cannon, the ringmaster announced: “And, now, please, I need your very close attention. Those members of the fairer sex who are prone to fainting spells may wish to excuse themselves during the next performance! Circus Wunderbar cannot take responsibility for any ill effects!”
“Oh. Give. Me. A. Break!” moaned Jaz.
“Shhhhh!” said I.
“And if any of you youngsters,” continued the ringmaster, “should need to cover your eyes during certain parts of the next act, I urge you to do so! There will be no shame!”
Jaz put her mouth to my ear. “I think I’m going to be sick!”
The ringmaster then proclaimed, “Good townspeople of Stevenson County! I present to you a high wire act unlike any you have ever seen! The Wondrous Wozniaks’s of Warsaw!”
To the accompaniment of some bouncy canned band music, the five smiling, waving ’Wondrous Wozniaks’s skipped out and into the circus ring.
The ‘high wire’ itself was some twenty feet off the ground, and about the same distance in length.
The act opened with three of the Wozniak’s ascending on high. First, the ‘patriarch,’ a gent in his fifties, used a balancing pole to make a few simple back-and-forth’s across the wire. He was then joined by a teenage girl, who did a cartwheel followed a hand stand. After a few more routines including the Wozniak ‘matriarch,’ the three skillfully jumped down into the net, flipped over onto the ground, and took their bows — while at the same time — the two other Wozniak’s, a man and woman, both twenty something’s, climbed the rope ladder.
“You’ll probably be wanting to pay close attention real soon, here,” said Jaz.
“How so, Jaz?
“Shhhhhhh!”
‘Stanislaw and Zuzanna,’ the obvious ‘stars,’ began their part of the act with ‘her’ standing on ‘his’ shoulders for a back and forth across the wire. Then, Stanislaw, sans Zuzanna, to the oohs and aahs of everyone, took a few turns on a unicycle.
After a couple of more very impressive routines, the canned music was replaced by a canned dramatic drum roll — and the ringmaster stepped into the ring to announce: “To conclude their performance, ladies and gentlemen, it will be Stanislaw’s and Zuzanna’s great pleasure to perform for you, here, in this very ring, on this very night, a feat which has been passed down through seven generations … and, that legend has it, is responsible for ‘wondrous’ being permanently affixed to the name Wozniak!”
“Yada yada yada,” sighed Jaz.
After acknowledging the anticipatory applause, Stanislaw removed from a suspended hook an extra tall unicycle, which he placed onto the wire, before then mounting it — while simultaneously — Zuzanna, in one swift continuous action, handed to her partner an extra-long balancing pole, and scrambled herself up onto Stanislaw’s shoulders — all to the collective gasps from the crowd.
On their return journey across the high wire, Zuzanna took some kind of ring thing from her belt, placed it atop Stanislaw’s head, bent down — and then, somehow, she was doing a head stand upon her partner’s head!
“Unbelievable,” said I.
“Yep,” said Jaz, unenthusiastically.
At this point, suddenly, the loud, tinny drum roll, after first becoming a high-pitched caterwaul, completely malfunctioned and went dead — leaving the circus tent in total silence — EXCEPT, that is, for a clear and distinctive PSSSSSSSST sound coming from the direction of the high wire.
“It’s all starting to make sense to me now, Chuck!”
Next thing! — Stanislaw has a major wobble — and then, suddenly, Zuzanna is hanging upside down with her legs wrapped around Stanislaw’s neck — and she exclaims: “Turn the damn thing off, already!”
During their coupled-descent down to the net, the extra-long balancing pole snapped in two, revealing numerous tubes and wires.
“What the …!?!” I exclaimed.
“Pneumatics, Chuck, combined with digital technology. Before Stanislaw slammed the trailer door in my face, I observed him testing the stabilizing air jets he had deceivingly integrated into each end of the balancing pole.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me, Jaz!”
“This kind of thing may go over okay in former Soviet satellite states, but here in the U.S.A. … not so much. Let’s just say, Chuck, that in this girl’s opinion, they got their just desserts.”
